This is quite amusing. I think devs should start making more stuff like this. Imagine that in Skyrim (pirated version) you'd play like for an hour, and then a pirate captain flying on a dragon pops out of fucking nowhere and kicks your ass from Falkreath to Dawnstar, all while screaming "Yar har har me mateys!" And then the "game over" screen displays a laughing skull flag.

JazzJack2:But piracy doesn't make developers lose money, in fact it does the opposite, devs gain money from piracy.

Voltano:While this could be a funny way of deterring pirates and teaching them a lesson, there are serious consequences the developers will have to contend with while doing stunts like these. "Titan's Quest" was a pretty good action RPG similar to "Diablo" at the time, and it had DRM that triggered a series of bugs in the game when it detected it was pirated.

The results turned out bad as several pirates reported the game was buggy and not as good, which discouraged legitimate customers from purchasing the game. Just as the Anodyne developers used piracy as a way to promote positive word-of-mouth feedback for their game, the developers for "Titan's Quest" accidentally made negative word-of-mouth feedback on their game due to DRM like this.

This doesn't look buggy, though, it looks like a strategy issue. Unless it gets negative reviews for being "too hard," it's probably safe on that front.

True, the game is intentionally screwing the player over when it detects it was pirated, but so did "Titan's Quest".

Let's say I sold cupcakes at a store. If someone stole it from me only to realize the insides of his cupcake has live maggots in it, it would repulse him. But if I turned around and said that I had made special cupcakes that were intended to be stolen with maggots in them to teach thieves a lesson, that still isn't going to help my public appearance. I'm a crazy person that puts maggots in cupcakes! Who would want to buy my kind of cupcakes when I state this?

What's even worse is that detecting what is a stolen cupcake from a legit cupcake is difficult. What if I sold a maggot-cupcake by 'accident' to a legit customer? The same could happen here in this game that their "DRM" could trigger via a bug on legal customers. Bugs like these are bound to appear in any kind of software, so its a very risky PR move for doing something like this.

The "Too Many Pirates" version is a separate version uploaded to the various torrent sites.

Think I'll go pirate a car. Wasn't going to buy it so it's not a lost sale! People seeing me driving it will want one themselves. I'm sure the police will understand perfectly that I didn't actually steal the car I stole and, in fact, did it to promote the model!

Gotta love how the completely self serving "logic" breaks down into utterly baffling stupidity when applied to anything but video games.

Very creative and entertaining. I hope that they actually got some people to see it their way.No wonder it's being pirated so much, though - it's not on Steam. I'll probably be among the first who buy it if and when it gets there.

JazzJack2:But piracy doesn't make developers lose money, in fact it does the opposite, devs gain money from piracy.

I'm going to believe the dev who:

-releases a demo-releases the game DRM free-only had 6.4% of the day one purchases actually be legitimate

...over you, a faceless dude with an axe to grind.

Repeating "devs gain money" doesn't make it true. Give me a non-theoretical reason to believe you, or I'll just continue to smack "6.4%" in your face.

Your figure of 6.4% has no relevance at all, it gives no indication of lost sales (or if there where any at all). And should be noted I did say piracy only helps games that are good, and since this is just a shitty knock off of other games I am not surprised people wont give money to this talentless whiny hack.

A-D.:You know (this is generally speaking, not to the person quoted alone), cause most people have morals and tend to pirate cause they cant indulge in their favourite pasttime to make ends meet, you know, rent, food etc. And if you want to bring up "Well then they shouldnt play at all." i will reply simply with this.

If you arent capable of any kind of empathy, or critical and logical thought, please turn in your brain, evidently you have no need for it. If you dont have enough money for rent, should you then "not have a home"? If you do not have enough money for food, should you then "not eat at all"? Note here, eating is necessary, a home is not. Before anyone brings up the argument of necessity vs luxury.

A home goes along with "Shelter", which typically is one of the items listed as a need. And they have homeless shelters and food programs for people who can't afford rent or food. So it still remains stupid to try to argue that digital bootleggers are justified in stealing copies of the games they want to play because "they can't afford it!". Because there is no real comparison between a luxury good like frikken video games and shelter. Your life won't be negatively affected if you don't get your daily fill of the latest AAA title you want to play.

So yeah, if they can't afford to buy all the games they want to play, then yes, they shouldn't play those games unless they can get them legally another way. Borrow them from a friend, or stick to free games.

JazzJack2:But piracy doesn't make developers lose money, in fact it does the opposite, devs gain money from piracy.

I'm going to believe the dev who:

-releases a demo-releases the game DRM free-only had 6.4% of the day one purchases actually be legitimate

...over you, a faceless dude with an axe to grind.

Repeating "devs gain money" doesn't make it true. Give me a non-theoretical reason to believe you, or I'll just continue to smack "6.4%" in your face.

Your figure of 6.4% has no relevance at all, it gives no indication of lost sales (or if there where any at all). And should be noted I did say piracy only helps games that are good, and since this is just a shitty knock off of other games I am not surprised people wont give money to this talentless whiny hack.

You can't claim talentless hack, because you haven't played the game (I'm 99.9% sure of this, given your disinterest in your first post).

And you call him "whiny" because... he nicely and amusingly puts his point across? Golly gee, I hope YOU haven't ever disagreed on something, or that would make YOU the whiniest whiner to ever whine! (Seriously, how did you think that was a smart thing to type?)

Also, you're right, it doesn't give indication of lost sales. So therefore, it's EXACTLY as valid as your claims that piracy is helpful. Except for one thing: At least I have a NUMBER. That's better than anything YOU can give me.

I'm still convinced that the people who pirate have no money. As soon as I got a cash flow for myself, I stopped giving a shit about day-one DLC because I realized I was paying about $20, or at worst $50, for a title that would have been $60 had it not been for steam. I think I break even in the end.

Also I preordered Final Fantasy 13 and ended up liking it a lot, so maybe it's some type of hostage mentality.

Tara Callie:At the end of the day, game design is not a charity. It costs a lot of money to make games and these people need to be able to put food on the table, no matter if it's a tiny indie studio run by two guys, or a monolithic company like EA or Valve.

Piracy is not a service issue, or an issue of customer satisfaction. Most piracy is the result of wanting something for nothing. If you are the kind of person who is going to pirate a game, nobody is inclined to listen to you when you talk about a company's business practices or whatever other garbage you are going to spew. You are not a customer at this point, your opinion is null and void. Companies do not listen to pirates, they have no reason to. Why would a company even bother trying to convince people not to pirate their game? They're going to do it anyway, because they want free stuff.

There is a major misconception here. Pirates aren't people who "want free stuff". I don't even think you know what kind of people pirate. They tend to come in two varieties: students and the poor; the people who pirate are those who cannot afford the $5 steam sales that go on every day or the $10 games off of Good Old Games. Do you want to know why piracy rates are through the roof? Because most gamers are students, between the ages of 5 to 25, and most of which don't have jobs. The 13 year old pirates because there's no other way he will get the game, not because he's a free loader.

Secondly, every intelligent opinion is valid. If a thief steals from Walmart and complains about the poor quality of the product, it is a valid complaint.

Thirdly, as someone who has pirated throughout middle and high school, now that I have money, I have bought every game that I have pirated via steam sales, including games that I would have never bought otherwise. The amount of games I own in steam broke 70 last year. There are more people like me than you think.

Also, you're right, it doesn't give indication of lost sales. So therefore, it's EXACTLY as valid as your claims that piracy is helpful. Except for one thing: At least I have a NUMBER. That's better than anything YOU can give me.

You have a figure that is meaningless, I have provided examples of where piracy has helped a game, I.E Minecraft. Give me one example where piracy has significantly damaged a game.

See, this is how you do DRM if you want to. Don't do anything that is a burden to paying customers, just subtly torture the pirates with annoyances. My favorite DRM ever put into something remains the Earthbound piracy measures, which made the monster spawn rate unbearably high, and should you get to the final boss, it'll hard crash and delete your saves, haha.

A-D.:You know (this is generally speaking, not to the person quoted alone), cause most people have morals and tend to pirate cause they cant indulge in their favourite pasttime to make ends meet, you know, rent, food etc. And if you want to bring up "Well then they shouldnt play at all." i will reply simply with this.

If you arent capable of any kind of empathy, or critical and logical thought, please turn in your brain, evidently you have no need for it. If you dont have enough money for rent, should you then "not have a home"? If you do not have enough money for food, should you then "not eat at all"? Note here, eating is necessary, a home is not. Before anyone brings up the argument of necessity vs luxury.

Shelter IS a necessity. Maybe you should look up the necessities before you post stuff like this.

Let's imagine that you have your necessities taken care of, but doing so leaves you with no money.

So, as long as you have:-a roof over your head-water-slight variety of food-human contact-clothing-heat and electricity

...then YES, you should DAMN WELL go without:-a car-decorations-gourmet food-gadgets-new games

I've done it. What makes everyone else a special snowflake that they don't have to go through "poor" stages of life?

If the developers themselves put up the torrent of the game doesn't that make it okay to download it? It would kinda be like a car salesman giving you the keys to a car and then claiming you're stealing it when you drive it away.

Also, you're right, it doesn't give indication of lost sales. So therefore, it's EXACTLY as valid as your claims that piracy is helpful. Except for one thing: At least I have a NUMBER. That's better than anything YOU can give me.

You have a figure that is meaningless, I have provided examples of where piracy has helped a game, I.E Minecraft. Give me one example where piracy has significantly damaged a game.

I said no theoretical arguments.

You said that large amounts of Minecraft YouTube players were "probably" pirates. YOU HAVE NO NUMBERS TO BACK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS.

Thus, your assumptions are EQUALLY VALID TO MINE.

But fine, piracy caused always-online DRM. We know this because the developers and publishers specifically said it was in place to combat pirates. Therefore, this isn't theoretical.

Therefore, if it wasn't for pirates, we wouldn't have had the disasters that were Assassin's Creed II, Diablo 3, and SimCity server crashes.

A-D.:You know (this is generally speaking, not to the person quoted alone), cause most people have morals and tend to pirate cause they cant indulge in their favourite pasttime to make ends meet, you know, rent, food etc. And if you want to bring up "Well then they shouldnt play at all." i will reply simply with this.

If you arent capable of any kind of empathy, or critical and logical thought, please turn in your brain, evidently you have no need for it. If you dont have enough money for rent, should you then "not have a home"? If you do not have enough money for food, should you then "not eat at all"? Note here, eating is necessary, a home is not. Before anyone brings up the argument of necessity vs luxury.

Shelter IS a necessity. Maybe you should look up the necessities before you post stuff like this.

Let's imagine that you have your necessities taken care of, but doing so leaves you with no money.

So, as long as you have:-a roof over your head-water-slight variety of food-human contact-clothing-heat and electricity

...then YES, you should DAMN WELL go without:-a car-decorations-gourmet food-gadgets-new games

I've done it. What makes everyone else a special snowflake that they don't have to go through "poor" stages of life?

Welp this is how shit the gaming community has become, games are no longer art or entertainment made with love and care but a luxury product designed to make money, a product you can only get by guzzling down mountains of corporate cum. No developer that actually cared about their game would say people shouldn't play it if they can't afford it.

The "Too Many Pirates" version is a separate version uploaded to the various torrent sites.

Legitimate customers have no reason to get close to it.

And the legitimate customers are...?

These 'legitimate customers' could be the ones who never heard of this game before all of this. The demo, I presume, is only provided by the developer's Web site that may not get as much attention as, say, Steam or PirateBay.org. Maybe some pirates are willing to purchase a game if they get a good experience out of the project, as the Anodyne developers did.

But no one likes a troll, and the last thing we do with trolls is give them money to stop us from being trolled. That's one point with my cupcake example: I shouldn't be rewarded for trolling 'legitimate customers', even if the thief turns around and pays for the cupcake. I'm not "punishing pirates" as this statement from the developers claim; I'm annoying my 'legitimate customers' from purchasing my product.

HannesPascal:If the developers themselves put up the torrent of the game doesn't that make it okay to download it? It would kinda be like a car salesman giving you the keys to a car and then claiming you're stealing it when you drive it away.

It would be more akin to a salesman leaving the keys on a bar and going to the toilet. You shouldn't be looking for things to torrent. If you weren't, you wouldn't have found it.

Slightly different to my analogy, I know. But you COULD say that leaving it on a bar is the equivalent to leaving it among untrustworthy strangers with an invitation to take it. Even though it's a remarkably stupid move, it's STILL illegal to take the keys.

lacktheknack:Shelter IS a necessity. Maybe you should look up the necessities before you post stuff like this.

Let's imagine that you have your necessities taken care of, but doing so leaves you with no money.

So, as long as you have:-a roof over your head-water-slight variety of food-human contact-clothing-heat and electricity

...then YES, you should DAMN WELL go without:-a car-decorations-gourmet food-gadgets-new games

I've done it. What makes everyone else a special snowflake that they don't have to go through "poor" stages of life?

Welp this is how shit the gaming community has become, games are no longer art or entertainment made with love and care but a luxury product designed to make money, a product you can only get by guzzling down mountains of corporate cum. No developer that actually cared about their game would say people shouldn't play it if they can't afford it.

Art/entertainment = necessity?

"Guzzling mountains of corporate cum"?

"No developer that actually cared would say you [should pay for it]"?

Are you human, or a whirling vortex of bizarre non-sequiturs that you picked up off the internet?

I dare you to back up your statements, especially the corporate cum one. I DARE YOU.

Also, you're right, it doesn't give indication of lost sales. So therefore, it's EXACTLY as valid as your claims that piracy is helpful. Except for one thing: At least I have a NUMBER. That's better than anything YOU can give me.

You have a figure that is meaningless, I have provided examples of where piracy has helped a game, I.E Minecraft. Give me one example where piracy has significantly damaged a game.

I said no theoretical arguments.

You said that large amounts of Minecraft YouTube players were "probably" pirates. YOU HAVE NO NUMBERS TO BACK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS.

I don't remember saying anything about Youtube LPs, But Notch himself has said Minecraft has a 70% piracy rate and in my opinion (and Notch's) this was a driving force behind Minecraft's success as by taping into a userbase it wouldn't have without piracy it went viral.

Your comment on DRM is also moot, Piracy does not cause DRM, publishers choose to use it, however DRM definitely does cause piracy.

HannesPascal:If the developers themselves put up the torrent of the game doesn't that make it okay to download it? It would kinda be like a car salesman giving you the keys to a car and then claiming you're stealing it when you drive it away.

Is anyone here complaining about this situation? I'm not seeing any debate about the games developers themselves put online.

The "debate" is about games that developers don't put online that people insist on bootlegging anyway.

Bocaj2000:There is a major misconception here. Pirates aren't people who "want free stuff".

Right, they just want to play and own these games without having to pay for them.

Which I think is about the same thing as "wanting free stuff". Rose by any other name...

Bocaj2000:I don't even think you know what kind of people pirate. They tend to come in two varieties: students and the poor; the people who pirate are those who cannot afford the $5 steam sales that go on every day or the $10 games off of Good Old Games. Do you want to know why piracy rates are through the roof? Because most gamers are students, between the ages of 5 to 25, and most of which don't have jobs. The 13 year old pirates because there's no other way he will get the game, not because he's a free loader.

That doesn't entitle them to free games! That doesn't entitle them to things they want but don't need because "I want it." How is what you're describing not a freeloader? How does not being able to afford these games justify them bootlegging them just because they feel 'entitled' to play them? If they can't afford $5 or $10 for a game on sale, it sounds they've got a lot bigger problems than "I can't afford to buy that game".

Bocaj2000:If a thief steals from Walmart and complains about the poor quality of the product, it is a valid complaint.

As is the complaint about the thief stealing from Wal-Mart in the first place.

The "Too Many Pirates" version is a separate version uploaded to the various torrent sites.

Legitimate customers have no reason to get close to it.

And the legitimate customers are...?

These 'legitimate customers' could be the ones who never heard of this game before all of this. The demo, I presume, is only provided by the developer's Web site that may not get as much attention as, say, Steam or PirateBay.org. Maybe some pirates are willing to purchase a game if they get a good experience out of the project, as the Anodyne developers did.

But no one likes a troll, and the last thing we do with trolls is give them money to stop us from being trolled. That's one point with my cupcake example: I shouldn't be rewarded for trolling 'legitimate customers', even if the thief turns around and pays for the cupcake. I'm not "punishing pirates" as this statement from the developers claim; I'm annoying my 'legitimate customers' from purchasing my product.

You fail economics forever.

You are not a "legitimate customer" until you buy the product. Before that, your'e a potential customer. Huge difference.

In your cupcake example, there is a little stand with free slices of cupcake on it. That's the demo.

The maggoty cupcakes are on the counter, but NEVER SERVED to anyone who buys a cupcake. The good ones are behind the counter, and you give them a good one when they buy one. They get to have a slice before they buy any.

Now, in your example, if a potential customer grabs a maggoty cupcake and runs, they are now a thief. In the REAL world, thieves are banned from the store - they get their face posted on the billboard in the back, they aren't allowed back in the store. Pirates at least are allowed back in afterwards.

But the guy with the maggoty cupcake won't come back, AND THAT'S FINE BY THE STORE. He had NO REASON to grab that cupcake aside from sociopathic greed. He's a thief, not a potential legitimate customer.

I wanted to buy this game, sight unseen, after reading this. I can't, because their website is down (is too much traffic from news stories like this to blame?), and they haven't been greenlit on Steam yet. All y'all, go greenlight them right away.

You have a figure that is meaningless, I have provided examples of where piracy has helped a game, I.E Minecraft. Give me one example where piracy has significantly damaged a game.

I said no theoretical arguments.

You said that large amounts of Minecraft YouTube players were "probably" pirates. YOU HAVE NO NUMBERS TO BACK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS.

I don't remember saying anything about Youtube LPs, But Notch himself has said Minecraft has a 70% piracy rate and in my opinion (and Notch's) this was a driving force behind Minecraft's success as by taping into a userbase it wouldn't have without piracy it went viral.

Your comment on DRM is also moot, Piracy does not cause DRM, publishers choose to use it, however DRM definitely does cause piracy.

It's not moot. DRM exists because of pirates. Thus, it's something terrible that's been done to games because of pirates.

Publisher reaction is just that: REACTION to something.

Sticking your fingers in your ears and denying things doesn't make you right.

Are you human, or a whirling vortex of bizarre non-sequiturs that you picked up off the internet?

I dare you to back up your statements, especially the corporate cum one. I DARE YOU.

A developer that cared about his craft would want as many people to play his game as possible, he would not pass judgment on how people choose to get it, a dev that condemns piracy cares only about money and not about art or craftsmanship. Publishers frequently enforce the idea that their practices are necessary and games only exist as business and not an artform. And the worst part is people are gullible enough to believe this, I frequently see people saying DRM is necessary or microtransactions are fine, they are 'guzzling corporate cum' so to speak.

"The developer said that it has conducted this social experiment as a way to try and open gamer's eyes to just how damaging piracy can be. The depressing results of its own game's day one piracy rates show that only 6.4% of people playing the game bought it legitimately."

The dev themselves offered up a cracked version that was basically hard mode for a casual game that is not original at all. Why wouldn't people get that one for free? It's a slightly better Game Dev Story and worse (dumbed down) than older game tycoon games.

Are you human, or a whirling vortex of bizarre non-sequiturs that you picked up off the internet?

I dare you to back up your statements, especially the corporate cum one. I DARE YOU.

A developer that cared about his craft would want as many people to play his game as possible, he would not pass judgment on how people choose to get it, a dev that condemns piracy cares only about money and not about art or craftsmanship. Publishers frequently enforce the idea that their practices are necessary and games only exist as business and not an artform. And the worst part is people are gullible enough to believe this, I frequently see people saying DRM is necessary or microtransactions are fine, they are 'guzzling corporate cum' so to speak.

Really? You don't think a person who cares about the craft might also care about whether the people who are enjoying it paid to enjoy it or if those people said "I want to enjoy this, money be darned! I DESERVE to enjoy this!" and decided to enjoy it without compensating the person who made it?

Have you ever considered that the "artform" you call video games probably wouldn't exist as we know them if it weren't for business and corporations? They certainly wouldn't be as prolific and you probably never would have even heard of the vast majority of the most popular titles.

Are you human, or a whirling vortex of bizarre non-sequiturs that you picked up off the internet?

I dare you to back up your statements, especially the corporate cum one. I DARE YOU.

A developer that cared about his craft would want as many people to play his game as possible, he would not pass judgment on how people choose to get it, a dev that condemns piracy cares only about money and not about art or craftsmanship. Publishers frequently enforce the idea that their practices are necessary and games only exist as business and not an artform. And the worst part is people are gullible enough to believe this, I frequently see people saying DRM is necessary or microtransactions are fine, they are 'guzzling corporate cum' so to speak.

An artist does NOT compromise his artistic integrity if he dumps thousands of dollars into something and then wants people to pay for entry.

Sometimes, the artist cares deeply about his product, and that's WHY he doesn't want people just taking it without paying. Why can we not have both?

So, he just said "I pirated before and that was ok, but now it's not anymore"? Price of the games is more often a factor than their availability - or rather, the price is what makes it unavailable to some people and not whether it's physically or digitally "available" in their area.

You are not a "legitimate customer" until you buy the product. Before that, your'e a potential customer. Huge difference.

In your cupcake example, there is a little stand with free slices of cupcake on it. That's the demo.

The maggoty cupcakes are on the counter, but NEVER SERVED to anyone who buys a cupcake. The good ones are behind the counter, and you give them a good one when they buy one. They get to have a slice before they buy any.

But how would I know which ones I'm serving? The maggoty cupcakes intended to deter thieves or the ones that are meant to be sold with no maggots? I don't recall talking about the position of either one.

I'm a programmer and I'm aware that bugs are going to appear in any program. Even triple-A products like "Aliens: Colonial Marines" or "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" has their own fill of bugs that could hinder any kind of customer's -- whether legitimate or potential -- experience. AI might not work right; save games may get corrupted; or game-breaking events trigger to ruin the player from making any progress. These bugs can appear more as more features and people work on a product. Someone might be using the wrong assets in the game during launch which leads to some issues. Which, as I recall, what happened to EA with "Medal of Honor: WarFighter" that they had to release a massive patch on day one to fix.

So how can this form of DRM be trusted? We already have a good history of DRM working poorly in the game industry that it now has to be covered up -- such as "SimCity" being an MMO. We already know the developers intentionally put this DRM in their game to stop "thieves" and "bad men" who hurt them by "stealing" their work -- which they uploaded, by the way. Now this form of DRM is integrated into the core mechanics of the game instead of acting as a wrapper, as it triggers the state where the player keeps losing due to pirates for pirating the game. Am I suppose to trust the developers that they know what Boolean variable to flip to true/false when I pay them? Would you trust me with what cupcake I sell to you when I hand one over?

This has nothing to do with economics. In the cupcake example I intentionally put maggots in there to "teach the community" a lesson by being a troll. If I wanted to win people over to my cupcakes I should present it in a nice way, and treat any kind of customers with respect. I don't want maggots in my cupcakes, so I see no reason to make them to spite any thieves or "bad people". I should win them over for making good cupcakes.

Are you human, or a whirling vortex of bizarre non-sequiturs that you picked up off the internet?

I dare you to back up your statements, especially the corporate cum one. I DARE YOU.

A developer that cared about his craft would want as many people to play his game as possible, he would not pass judgment on how people choose to get it, a dev that condemns piracy cares only about money and not about art or craftsmanship. Publishers frequently enforce the idea that their practices are necessary and games only exist as business and not an artform. And the worst part is people are gullible enough to believe this, I frequently see people saying DRM is necessary or microtransactions are fine, they are 'guzzling corporate cum' so to speak.

Really? You don't think a person who cares about the craft might also care about whether the people who are enjoying it paid to enjoy it or if those people said "I want to enjoy this, money be darned! I DESERVE to enjoy this!" and decided to enjoy it without compensating the person who made it?

Have you ever considered that the "artform" you call video games probably wouldn't exist as we know them if it weren't for business and corporations? They certainly wouldn't be as prolific and you probably never would have even heard of the vast majority of the most popular titles.

Corporatism may have helped build video games up but now with the internet as an easy way to publish games it's nothing more than an anachronism, corporatism has all but destroyed quality in recent mainstream video games bar a few bigs devs that refuse to follow it (such as CDProjektRED).